The invention concerns generally the methods and arrangements for controlling the proceeding of a telephone call. Especially the invention concerns the use of a network-connected computer for such controlling.
For the purposes of this patent application, the concept of a telephone call (or xe2x80x9ccallxe2x80x9d for short) is generally understood to refer to any telecommunication connection for transferring voice, data and/or other types of information between a limited number of selected participants that take part in the call through any terminals connected to any networks. Examples of such telephone calls are mobile telephone calls, novel packet-switched connections such as GPRS connections (General Packet Radio Service), calls made from a conventional wireline telephone and so-called Internet calls. The networks are telecommunications systems for offering a very large number of potential connections between arbitrarily selected participants, and they especially include circuit switched telephone networks (both wireline and mobile) and packet switched networks used at least partially for making calls. A participant in a call can be a human using a terminal, or a computer. A call can convey any types of data especially including voice and video streams. A terminal can be any device connected to a network, especially a wireline telephone, a mobile telephone or a computer having access to a network between computers. Call control is especially understood as a process involving the control of switches used for relaying calls. A switch can be either a conventional switch for circuit switched telephone network, or a counterpart of a switch in a packet switched network (like an IP or Internet Protocol network), e.g. a xe2x80x9cGatekeeperxe2x80x9d according to the standard H.323 of ITU-T (International Telecommunication Unionxe2x80x94Telecommunication Standardization Sector). Call control as a generic term also applies to a call routed directly between terminals without a switch in between.
As an example of a prior art solution for call control we will briefly describe a known solution for call diverting and voice mail. FIG. 1 illustrates a simplified telecommunication system where a circuit switched telephone network 100 comprises a switch 101. A first user terminal 102 and a second user terminal 103 are coupled to said switch; the connections may comprise a large number of intermediate segments and devices like private branch exchanges and routers (not shown). The switch is equipped with a voice mail service unit 104 with memory means for storing and playing back information sequences that represent voice messages.
At the first instant the user of the first terminal 102 uses his terminal to record an answering message 105 into the voice mail system and gives the switch a command 106 to activate a conditional call diverting function that diverts an incoming call into the voice mail system if the user of the first terminal does not answer within a predetermined tine. At the second instant the user of the second terminal 103 tries to make a call to the user of the first terminal, causing a connection request message 107 to be transmitted to the switch 101 and further to the first terminal. The user of the first terminal does not answer, so at the third instant the call is diverted to the voice mail system 104 which plays back to the caller the previously recorded answering message according to arrow 108. At the fourth instant the caller stores a voice message 109 into the voice mail system and ends the call. At later time instants that are not shown in FIG. 1 the user of the first terminal may contact the voice mail system and listen to the stored messages left by other users.
In the system of FIG. 1 the call control functions are all realised within the switch 101, which requires that the telephone operator that is responsible for the operation of the switch must have implemented the corresponding functional blocks as parts of the switching equipment. The same is true for many other known call control functions, although some modem terminals like digital mobile telephones also comprise features that may be used to implement some limited call controlling. In any case the known solutions for call control are not very flexible in the sense that they offer very limited possibilities for personalizing the call control functions according to the needs of individual users.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and an arrangement for implementing call control functions in a highly personalized manner. It is an additional object of the invention to provide a method and an arrangement for offering good extensibility and scalability as well as backwards-compatible updating possibilities for the implementation of call control functions. It is a still further object of the invention to provide a call control solution that would not require extensive updating to the existing hardware of information transfer systems.
The objects of the invention are achieved by letting the information content of a stored file in a network-connected server to implement call control.
The method according to the invention is characterised in that it comprises the steps of
a) establishing a call from a terminal to a first server,
b) associating said call with a network browser in said first server,
c) using said network browser to locate and download a stored file,
d) interpreting the contents of the downloaded stored file and
e) using the interpreted contents of the downloaded stored file to control said call.
The invention also applies to a computer device comprising
means for establishing connections with the terminals of a first telecommunication network and
network browser means for locating and downloading stored files from the servers of a second telecommunication network; it is characterised in that it additionally comprises
means for associating established connections with the terminals of said first telecommunication network with certain network browser means for locating and downloading stored files and
means for controlling the established connections with the terminals of said first telecommunication network according to the contents of the downloaded stored files.
Additionally the invention applies to a telecommunication system that is characterised in that it comprises
a first server,
a first telecommunication network for establishing connections between the terminals of said first telecommunication network and said first server,
a second telecommunication network for establishing connections between said first server and other servers,
means for downloading stored files from said other servers to said first server and
means for controlling the established connections between the terminals of said first telecommunication network and said first server according to the contents of the stored files downloaded from said other servers to said first server.
A web page is a file of electronically stored information that it available for a computer connected to a network and suited to transferring from said computer through said network to other computers. The most common example of a web page is a file written in HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) and stored within a computer that is coupled to the Internet. The user of another computer may access the web page by using a program called as a network browser to download a copy of the corresponding file and an HTML parser to convert the HTML sequence into a graphical representation of the contents of the file.
HTML allows for certain subblocks of the web page file to be enclosed within certain start and end indicators called tags. An HTML parser that does not recognize a certain pair of tags ignores the information between them but handles all other, recognized information in the file correctly. This feature guarantees certain backward compatibility between web pages and HTML parsers: an old parser is still able to read and handle a part of a web page containing novel subblocks if the web page is otherwise written in terms that were known at the time of producing the parser.
According to the invention a network browser and a parser (usually contained within the network browser) are associated with a call that is directed to a certain web page. The page is allowed to contain call control functions that are enclosed within certain tags. When the parser recognizes a tag corresponding to call control functions, it causes these functions to be performed on the associated call. The call control functions that are possible to realize this way comprise but are not limited to call divert call forwarding, pre- and post-call announcement, mid-call announcement, call hang-up, call set-up and conference call, call screening and delivery lists. These basic capabilities can be used for building services like for example audio and video call completion, interactive voice response, video on demand, conference call, video conference, voice mail, unified messaging, voice activated dialling, personal number service, virtual private networks and called party pays.
In addition to web pages in the narrow meaning, also other kind of stored files may be used to implement the above-explained features. Network browsers may be used to locate and download files for example from the so-called ftp (file tranfer protocol) and telnet servers.